My Antonia Essay: Psychoanalytic Criticism -- My Antonia Essays

psychoanalytical reprehension of My Antonia Abstract This essay uses psychoanalysis as the strategy of recitation to read Willa Cathers My Antonia. Freuds well-known theory--the Oedipus complex--and Lacans theory of the mirror Stage are utilize as the modes of approaching the unfermented. I use psychoanalytic criticism as a means of interpreting Willa Cathers My Antonia because I find some similarities amidst My Antonia and Peter Pan, between that and The Awakening when reading Keith Greens Critical Theory and figure A Coursebook. In the light of Freuds Oedipus complex, like Peter Pan who sees aeriform as a lover and mother, and who develops his sexual identity through this complex, Jim core group also has a mother-like lover, Antonia, and finally comes to take his sexualized and gendered identity in this globe. In the view of Lacans Mirror Stage, like Edna Pontellier who wishes to return to her childhood memory, to return to the world of the Imaginary, in which some times I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow over again idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided (Chopin 520), Jim Burden recollects his boyhood living in the great midland plain of north America where he feels he and Nature are one, but, unlike Edna who goes seat and does not come back, Jim goes into the realm of the Imaginary and comes back to the Symbolic, experiencing the process of the Mirror Stage. These are the reasons why I try to apply psychoanalysis in the interpretation of the novel. General ideas will be given after the summery of the novel. Willa Cathers My Antonia begins with Jim Burdens an interminable journey across the great prairie of North America (Cather 5), a journey back ... ...one sometimes finds ones self behaving in bad stargaze (Cather 158). After then, he feels he never want to see Antonia again and he hates her as much as he hates Cutter. This accident pushes Jim to set aside Antonia and to go to Lincoln for study. The relationship between psychoanalysis and Willa Cathers My Antonia has not been defined. I hope that this essay is the first step towards seeing this wonderful novel from a new perspective. Works Cited Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston Hougton Mifflin, 1988. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 3rd ed. naked as a jaybird York Norton, 1989. 508-598. Green, Keith, and Jill Lebihan. Critical Theory & Practice A Coursebook. New York Routledge, 1996. Wright, Elizabeth. Psychoanalytic Criticism Theory in Practice. New York Methuen,1984.